Monday, January 13, 2014

MORE ABOUT THE PROFESSOR

I can’t resist commenting further about the TV chit chat
between Michael Moore and Professor Robert Reich. A couple of things they said stuck
in my craw.

One was that the wealthiest 400 people in the United States make
more money than the poorest 150 million. Another was that the marginal tax rate
peaked at 91% during the Eisenhower administration, which, they agreed was a
time of great prosperity for the middle class. A third point was that household
income in the United States has been on a downward trend for forty years.

I don’t know if they intended to infer that the prosperity
was caused by the high taxes or whether they meant to say that the prosperity
occurred in spite of the high taxes. In either case, it was pretty obvious that both gentlemen
disapproved of the growing gap between the income of the wealthiest and the
median income of the American people.

The professor was quite adamant that the goal of a good
economic system ought to be traffic in money. A lot of money being made, and a
lot of money being spent. The more is made and spent, the better off everybody
is. That is the theory of stimulus. That is the economists’ argument in favor
of entitlements, and government spending in general.

If that were true, it would follow that a government program
giving every man, woman and child in the nation a fat paycheck of let’s say
$10,000 per month would skyrocket the economy to an unheard of level of
prosperity.

I don’t think so. In fact, I think that supermarkets would
shortly be out of strawberries and lettuce and just about everything else.

Working is not just to get things for yourself. We all have
the social obligation to contribute to the common welfare. In a free country,
that social obligation is discharged freely and voluntarily by every person as
they go about the business of seeking their own happiness.

The gap between the incomes at the top of the scale and the
national median is interesting. Here’s a good example my son likes to
tell: in 1969, when, as Chief Justice of
Michigan, I was able to persuade the State Officers Compensation Commission to
give the Justices a raise from $35,000 to $42,000 a year, a star baseball
player on the Detroit Tigers by the name of Al Kaline was paid $88,000
annually. And he didn’t even have to work in the wintertime!

Today, the Michigan Supreme Court Justices are paid $165,000
a year. Miguel Cabrera makes $21,000,000. He doesn’t have to suit up in the
winter either.

My $42,000 in 1969 would calculate to $271,949 in 2012.
Kaline’s $88,000 would equal $569,798 in 2012.

In a free economy, what does this tell us?

Two things, I suppose. Franchise level third basemen are
hard to come by and intelligent, public spirited lawyers are a dime a dozen.

I’m sure there are many explanations. I doubt that Mr. Moore
and Professor Reich would agree, but there is the fact that the institution of
marriage has been on a downturn. Household income goes down when there are
fewer people in the household. And the DINKs (double income, no kids) don’t have
to work as hard or fight for raises as hard as I did in 1969 with a wife and
six children at home.

I never envied Kaline his $88K and I don’t envy Cabrera’s 21
mil.

The fat paychecks of ball players and stockbrokers are a
function of people spending and investing their money the way they want to
spend it and invest it.

Folks who make a lot of money and spend a lot of money are
just priming the economic pump. Those who save money and invest it in
enterprises that hire people and buy things are also priming the pump.

The amount of money a person or a corporation has is not the
measure of social responsibility. Harvard University has a multi-billion dollar
endowment. I don’t hear liberals complaining. The real stinkers are the folks
who bury their coins in the yard. Jesus told a story about that, and he didn’t
approve. The only thing worse than burying money in the yard is buying
government bonds.

3 comments:

Judge, you've been watching too much Fox FauxNews - your blog sounds like it. You might want to disable the comments now going forward since if a person disagrees with you in any shape or fashion, you dump the comments in the trash can.

Old Judge, you lost me on this one. It sticks in your craw that they SAID that the wealthiest 400 make more than the poorest 150 million or that it's true? Surely u can see how destructive inequality is in a democracy.

Lots of folks make no distinction between income and assets. What we make is called earnings, what we have is called wealth. A baseball player who makes 20 million and spends 25 million is not wealthy. He is probably bankrupt. The difference between income and wealth is important. If you want to change it, you have to do different things.

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